Top Ten

I thought I´d just go through a run down of things that I´ve noticed. I´ve been keeping a list of things I like and miss in my head. It´s kind of like my version of "top ten things..."

The Good Stuff
---------------------------------------------------
First, I like cobblestone and brick sidewalks and roads. I´ll admit, sometimes it makes it kind of hard to tell where the road ends and the sidewalk begins, but as long as you have cat-like speed and reflexes you can dodge those crazy drivers just fine. Same goes for old architecture. Nothing fancy, just character through age.

Mountains-plain and simple. With lots of trees on them.

A fabulous transportation system. Even though Jena feels about the same size as Bloomington, even it has 3 train stations, a tram, buses, and taxis.

Lately, some great music I´ve heard includes Guru´s Jazzmataz, Carla Bruni, and the soundtrack from this movie called Underground. Now that I think about it, I heard a lot of awesome music at Jorge´s party, too-I´m going to have to ask him to burn me some stuff.

Also hearing American music everywhere.

Speaking of America, most of you have probably heard of the site www.jibjab.com They have two really funny song parodies called "This Land" and "It´s Good To Be In DC". If you haven´t seen one or both of these, you need to do it right now. One piece of advice-don´t try and watch them if you don´t have speakers/aren´t able to hear sound-seeing as how these are SONGS, it kind of ruins it if you can´t hear them.

Food. The best things I´ve tried were the döner and bratwurst. They also have really awesome bread-think the complete antithesis of Wonder bread. It´s really heavy and all different kinds are made with every kind of seed imagineable (sunflower, pumpkin, other kinds of nuts).

Stuff That Just Isn´t The Same
---------------------------------------------------------
The daunting task it is just to find a jar of friggin´ peanut butter.

The Simpsons. As you all should know, this one is big. Don´t get me wrong, they do air the Simpsons in Germany, but dubbed in german it just isn´t the same. You might even dare to say it´s just not that funny. Though I have seen Ducktales, Jaws, and Beavis and Butthead in german and that was pretty funny.

My refrigerator. It is a common stereotype that Europeans buy food more often instead of just stockpiling it in pantries and jumbo-sized refrigerators. Though it is a nice concept, I still want my jumbo-sized ice box. I don´t see why we can´t do both-buy often and have unnecessarily large cooling appliances. My refrigerator is about the size of a dorm-sized one, by the way. You know, the ones where you can´t fit any size container that is bigger than a single serving?

The absence of a living room. The apartment I live in has 2 bedrooms, a bathroom and a kitchen. The size, variety, and number of rooms varies with the place you´re living in. That is, my friend lives in a house which is really no different than one you´d find in the states. And another friend lives in an apartment which is bigger and thus has a living room. Perhaps you can get away with no living room if you have something else to take its place like a kitchen. Our kitchen is primarily the "social" spot which is okay, but sometimes you want to relax on a sofa to hang out and talk with everyone, not sit at the kitchen table. Know what I mean?